3. Shi Jianqiao

Public Domain

In early 20th-century China, local warlords fought one another for power and for control of opium-trafficking channels. In time, Sun Chuanfang, the Nanking warlord, rose to the top. Along the way he made a lot of enemies thanks to brutal tactics, like the decapitation of a rival officer named Shi Congbin, whose head he speared on a stick. It took 10 years, but Congbin's daughter, Shi Jianqiao finally caught up with him in a Buddhist temple, where she filled him with lead as he prayed. Instead of a prison sentence, Jianqiao received a pardon.